Ink jet printers are known in the art for printing images onto a medium (e.g. paper) using a variety of different inks. Ink jet printers also have applications in materials deposition, including functional and non-functional materials (e.g. for fabricating circuits and/or display devices on a variety of substrates). They have many advantages over other forms of printing, in particular they may be configured to print large areas in colour or black and white relatively quickly and they are relatively inexpensive compared with other printing technologies. Background prior art can be found in US 2003/0030715; US 2005/0018032; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,049,898.
It would be advantageous to provide an ink jet printer where the controller software may be configured to accept different print heads and/or different print head orientations, and whereby the printer may be reconfigured for a new print head or print head orientation without replacing the controller software. This would allow the user more choice in terms of print quality versus volume for the same print head, and/or the choice of different sized print heads (and different shapes) for different purposes (and different budgets) and reduce support costs for manufacturers.